Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.02.2017, Qupperneq 45

Movie Lumiere44
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02 — 2017
The French Film Festival is a wel-
come addition to the traditional
Holly wood fare served up in
Háskólabíó most of the time, and
this year, the French take on two
stalwart Hollywood genres, the
superhero film and the war movie.
So, what would a Frenchman do if
he attained superpowers? If your
answer is: Impress his girlfriend,
you would be right, at least accord-
ing to the movie ‘Vincent’. Admit-
tedly, Vincent’s superpowers are
rather unhelpful when it comes
to crime fighting. He becomes su-
perstrong and can run and swim
and jump at superhuman speeds
whenever he becomes wet. The
problem is, of course, that he dries
off very fast and can only really
use his powers when it’s raining
or when he’s swimming (it’s a pity
names like Aqua Man and Rain
Man are already taken, so we are
stuck with just plain old Vincent).
Mostly then, Vincent shows off his
skillset to his girlfriend. Howev-
er, when his friend gets in a fight,
Vincent is forced to kick some ass.
In a Hollywood film, this would be
just a warm-up until the nearest
supervillain comes along but here,
it is the centrepiece of the story.
The bust-up attracts the attention
of the police, which sets Vincent on
the run and gives him opportuni-
ties to show off his powers.
The viewer is left wondering why
he didn’t just try to talk his way
out of the situation—after all, he
didn’t do anything that couldn’t
plausibly be explained—but there
you are. No explanation is given
for this powers, nor is his aim
anything more than just to be left
alone. With great power comes…
well, great nuisance? As a Gallic
take on a very popular Hollywood
genre, one feels that ‘Vincent’
could have gone a lot farther. But
at least it is different.
So far, there haven’t been nearly
as many Afghanistan movies as
those coming out of Vietnam,
but we have gotten a few such as
‘Lone Survivor’. The latest war in
Afghanistan was a multinational
venture and other countries have
gotten in on the action filmwise,
such as the Danes with the film
‘Brödre’, Norway with the series
‘Nobel’, and even Iceland with a
documentary called ‘Íslenska svei-
tin’ (‘The Icelandic Squad’).
The latest French entrant is called
‘Neither Heaven nor Earth’ (‘Ni le
ciel ni la terre’). It starts out prom-
isingly enough, with soldiers in an
isolated outpost being a general
nuisance to the inhabitants, kill-
ing their sheep and telling then
where they can’t go with threats
of lethal force, both of which help
explain why the intervention went
so badly.
However, the plot soon becomes
supernatural, and here the prob-
lems set in. Soldiers start disap-
pearing in an impossible manner,
and instead of the film using this
conceit to generate excitement or
make some philosophical point,
we just get endless scenes of men
wandering about searching for
the missing with no real explana-
tion given. It is like searching for a
needle in a haystack, and at times
equally exciting. But perhaps it is
true that the darkness unleashed
in the war will soon rise up and
engulf the world. Perhaps in the
near future all countries will be
like Afghanistan. At least here in
Iceland, we should have enough
sheep to see us through.
So, here are two interesting at-
tempts to put a spin on tiring
genres, but neither is completely
successful.
The French Film Festival at
Háskólabíó ends on February 10th.
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Superheroes &
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